I'm not going to undermine the art of tai chi and hundreds of thousands of years of ancient Chinese history and practices by suggesting scientific explanations for that staticy feeling between my hands. But, if that fuzzy feeling really baffles you, it might make you feel better to think of it as your personal bubble.
Adventures in Medicine and Life
Chronicling my experiences as a medical student diving head-first into the world of medicine
Monday, September 19, 2011
Finding My Chi?
I'm not going to undermine the art of tai chi and hundreds of thousands of years of ancient Chinese history and practices by suggesting scientific explanations for that staticy feeling between my hands. But, if that fuzzy feeling really baffles you, it might make you feel better to think of it as your personal bubble.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
A Poem for Cardiology
Thus much and more, and yet thou lov'st me not,
And never wilt, Love dwells not in our will
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
To strongly, wrongly, vainly, love thee still.
-Lord Byron
Monday, September 12, 2011
Your Eyelids Are Getting Heavy...
Today, we learned therapeutic self-hypnosis and the speaker told us about how she actually hypnotized herself before she underwent a surgery for an ulcer repair. She told herself that she would bleed less and feel no pain. And then she actually showed us the video of her surgery, without ANY anesthesia, and she was totally fine, talking during the surgery about how she could feel pressure in her abdomen, but no pain at all. She even helped the surgeons realize that they were tugging too hard on something INSIDE OF HER. HOW STRANGE. How can you tell yourself consciously or unconsciously to control an autonomic process of the body? How can you control bleeding or hemostasis? What in the world?!? I'm so confused. And if it's possible, then wouldn't that be incredibly helpful for patients who don't want to experience side-effects of anesthesia during surgeries?
And THEN she hypnotized us. I GOT HYPNOTIZED. WHAT?! It sounds so mystical and other-worldly, but the speaker basically told us that self-hypnosis just entails entering into a trance state. Like for example, when you're driving and then 20 mins later, you don't remember the exact specific details of how you got to that particular portion of the highway, but some part of you was still consciously in control, enough to successfully maneuver the car. Still don't get how hypnosis can induce clotting. Anyway, I can't fully wrap my head around it. I've always been somewhat of an alternative medicine skeptic, but maybe I've just become a product of the intensely scienci-fied (yeah I made that word up) academic environment that I've been exposed to. Either way, very interesting stuff.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Did you know...
So the fetal kidneys excrete urine into the amniotic sac and then the fetus ingests that back in and this process promotes normal fetal growth. So if the fetal kidneys are underdeveloped, the fetus can have significant problems because it doesn't have enough amniotic fluid supporting its growth. Crazy, right?! Bet you never made that connection.
P.S. Oligohydromnios = reduced amniotic fluid; This photo just shows different problems that can cause oligohydromnios.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Lethal Injection
This is a general photo of the position of the cochlea within the inner ear:
And inside the cochlea, there's a tonotopic organization, with the highest frequencies of sound heard at the base of the cochlea, and the lowest near the apex:
As we get older, we naturally lose our ability to hear some of the higher frequency sounds. Even by our teen years, we can't hear some of the more higher frequencies - and we just lose more and more of that as we age. If you want to see what frequency you can still hear, here's a fun website: How well can you hear?
So, when doctors insert cochlear implants, they aim to insert the implant electrode into the cochlea far enough so as to cover all the damaged hair cells (the sensory receptors of the auditory system). If the spiral cochlea was rolled out, it would look like this photo below - contrary to what you'd think, the cochlea is actually narrower at the base and widens as it gets rolled out towards the apex:
However, there's a huge risk of damaging the existing non-damaged, normal-functioning hair cells as the electrode is slowly advanced forward causing further hearing loss than the patient originally presented with.
So in this case, once the surgery is over, the patient will have better high-frequency hearing because of the implant, but will have lost the low-frequency hearing he had before, because the implant itself damaged the hair cells at the apex of the cochlea.
Currently, there does not exist a method of detecting whether the existing lower-frequency area hair cells have been damaged during the insertion process as the surgeons are doing the cochlear implantation surgery. This research project hopes to take a huge step towards providing that technology to the surgeons so if they detect the damage they have just caused, they can either know how far to precisely advance the electrode or if they've already caused irreversible damage, they can advance the electrode all the way to the apex of the cochlea, so the patient can have full use of the implant even at the portions near the apex of the cochlear, which the surgeon just damaged via the insertion procedure.
I know it sounds a little confusing at first, but is actually a pretty cool project. We basically advance electrodes within the cochlea of noise-exposed gerbils (whose high-frequency hearing has been wiped out), and try to see whether the electrode can detect the extent of the existng damaged hair cells before the electrode passes beyond them to potentially cause damage to normal hearing hair cells.
Bottom line: I get to do surgery on gerbils. And that makes me very happy.
+
= SUMMER FUN!
Long post, I know, but we're finally at the end. Hope everyone is enjoying their summers!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Quarter Past Med School
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Cause of Death
Penny's Peculiar Colon
When we reached the lower-part of the colon, a surgeon helping us dissect, pulled out the entire lower part of the large intestine and showed us a rock-hard portion of the colon that wasn't supposed to be there. 'She must have had colon cancer' - he told us. We all took turns holding the mass in our hands - harder, stiffer than the rest of the intestines and very large - the size of a small fist - it was sticking out of the lower part of Penny's colon. We wondered if this was what had ultimately claimed her life.
'I feel like a serial killer'
In the next anatomy dissection unit - we dissected the pelvis. This was a fairly intense dissection - we had to saw down the middle of Penny's body (using a handsaw - see photo) separating the top half and the bottom half. And then the bottom half was further sawed in half to separate the two legs. This was the point in our dissection unit, where Penny was nothing more than the sum of her parts - body pieces placed all over. Sometimes, when we needed a better dissection angle, we would place her leg on her chest - so surreal.
Missing PartsWe dissected the pelvis and found out that Penny had had a hysterectomy - a surgery to remove her uterus. However, her cervix was still intact - and upon our initial inspection we concluded that her colon cancer had invaded her cervix as the large solid mass was taking up such a large portion of the area where Penny's uterus should have been. We wondered whether this was the reason her uterus had been removed.
Cause of Death Revealed
The last day of Anatomy class - we were supposed to find out the age and cause of death of our cadavers. Our group was fairly convinced that Penny had had colon cancer which had spread to her cervix. It turned out that it was the other way around - Adenocarcinoma of the cervix. The tumor in her cervix had spread upwards into her colon - because we had dissected the colon before the pelvis - we'd assumed it had been the colon first. It was a bittersweet kind of day - through clues we learned of during our dissections we had pieced together parts of Penny's life - and here just like that we had discovered the reason for her death. Another interesting fact we learned that day was her age at the time of death. We'd always assumed she was in her early 50s - 60s. She had lean muscles, albeit with a certain amount of fat, incredible calves telling us she must have been an athlete - her heart was in good condition, and her overall appearance was a fairly healthy one. It turned out she was 89 years old - one of the oldest cadavers in our entire class. Impressive, huh? Penny must have taken really great care of herself - and I'm proud to have had this interaction with her.